A Scenario for Publishing Mathematics in the Future

Abstract

I offer a (not original) scenario, suitable for mathematics, for electronic
distribution of e-prints followed by journal submission (with its refereeing,
editing and acceptance/rejection) and publication in low cost paper journals for
the higher quality papers.
Almost all of the mathematicians that I know produce an electronic version of their
research papers in some flavor of TeX. Most of them do it themselves, but some get
help from another person in their department or organization.

Once the electronic version exists, it should be sent to an e-print archive, the
obvious one, at this time, is xxx at Los Alamos (http://xxx.lanl.gov). This follows the time honored
tradition of mathematicians sending out paper preprints of their work. These
preprints enlightened the recipients long before the paper appeared in a journal
(usually years, not months later), and sometimes established priority. The defect
is that sending out paper preprints is somewhat laborious, and they reach only the
"right" people. The electronic version is simple and democratic (once the e-print
is at xxx, then it is available to the world).

We mathematicians have a long and valuable tradition of putting papers through a
refereeing and editorial process. This is fundamental to getting (usually) papers
whose accuracy we can trust, and which meet (usually) some minimal standard of
readability. This tradition should not be weakened, so the second step after the
e-print archive is to send the paper to a journal. The journal should continue to
perform its usual function of refereeing, editing, and accepting or rejecting. If
it accepts, it publishes.

This is a simple scenario, involving only one simple extra task (which should be
considered in the author's self interest), namely, sending the electronic version
to the e-print archive. But it has some interesting consequences.

First, the author should retain the copyright, allowing only a license for the
publisher to print its version and do whatever they do currently with that
version. Or, at the very least, the author should retain the right to keep the
paper at the e-print archive, which after all, is an archive. What is the point to
making all or almost all of mathematics available quickly in one central location
(the e-print archive) if one is then going to take away some of the papers?

It is then easy for an electronic journal to exist. It need only create an
overlay, rather like a web page, which describes the journal and gives a table of
contents of published papers; if the reader is interested in a certain paper,
he/she clicks on the paper which is then retrieved, not from the journal, but from
the e-print archive where it will reside for all time. Thus a fledgling electronic
journal does not need to set up its own smaller version of xxx, but only needs to
piggyback on the existing e-print archive. Incidentally, the archive can include
the additional information of which journal has accepted the preprint.

The point to this electronic journal is that it has given a "Good Housekeeping seal
of approval" to its papers. This is just as important in the future as it has been
in the past. This work has always been done essentially for free by mathematicians
acting as referees or editors, and it would continue so. How "good" the "approval"
is depends, as in the past, on the standards of the journal.

What about paper journals? Certainly the very best journals will continue to exist
in paper form. Probably some of the weaker journals should stop bothering with the
cost of creating a paper version and be electronic only. What decides this will be
up to libraries and individuals who will vote with their pocketbooks as to whether
they want a paper copy of a journal badly enough to pay for it.

Journals will be forced to be very efficient in producing a paper version.
Otherwise libraries and individuals are likely save money by skipping the paper
version and relying on the e-print archive. The journals may only publish a yearly
volume, rather than monthly, quarterly, or whatever, simply in order to reduce
mailing and other costs. Libraries may prefer a yearly volume, for timeliness is
no longer as important since the papers reside at the e-print archive for those who
need them before the end of the year.

Journals are likely to require some standardization in the authors' TeX files, and
also to relax their own standards of beautifully and uniformly typeset journal
pages. This is one of the big costs for journals, and it is not at all clear that
readers would pay for it if it came out of their own pocket. On the other hand,
authors, after having labored over a paper, like to see it beautifully reproduced
in a handsome journal--it validates their work to some extent. So it is not clear
how this aspect will evolve in the future.

But I would guess that most journals will contract with very efficient printers and
distributors so as to keep their prices low so that libraries will continue to
subscribe to their paper journals. I would expect to see vendors arise that
contract with a number of electronic journals to efficiently print and distribute
the paper version. Competition between vendors should keep prices low, for the
mathematicians would be running the electronic journal and would (being non-profit)
want to see their journals on many library shelves.

Where does this leave current commercial publishers like Elsevier or Springer? It
is hard to see them surviving in mathematics unless they change dramatically. For
example, any list of the best math journals is likely to include the Annals
of Mathematics,Journal of the American Mathematical Society,
and Inventiones Mathematicae. They cost, respectively, 15 cents/page,
15 c/p and 110 c/p. You can guess which is published by Princeton University Press,
the American Mathematical Society, and Springer. The subscription base for
Inventiones is roughly half that of the Annals, and once
most papers in Inventiones appear on the e-print archive, how many
libraries are going to continue to subscribe to Inventiones when it
costs seven times as much?

It is claimed that there are hidden subsidies to the non-profit publishers which
make these comparisons unfair. The only source of subsidy for the societies is
dues, but many societies, including the AMS want to subsidize other activities
through their profits on journals and books. University press journals do get
modest hidden subsidies (e.g. university staff sometimes get part salary for
journal work from the journal, but work in university offices on university
equipment). But it is hard to imagine these subsidies even doubling the cost of the
journal, and if Annals of Mathematics cost 30 c/p, how much difference
would that make in the comparison with Inventiones?

Here is a recent anecdote: a colleague, X, recently edited a special issue of of
Elsevier's journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals devoted to papers in
the area of colleague Y. Y was interested in buying that issue, called Elsevier
for the price, and was told $346. He didn't expect cheap, but is "still
reeling".

It takes time, for most mathematicians don't pay too much attention to these
matters, but there is a growing list of us who are coming to realize that the high
priced commercial publishers are no friends of mathematics. More and more of us are
refusing to submit papers to, or referee for, or edit journals with high
subscription rates. Those who edit conference proceedings only need a couple of
their authors who are aware of prices, to convince the editors to seek out low cost
publishers. The electronic ways of distributing math research are attractive in
their own right, and the changeover from paper to electronic distribution is only
spurred on by the high prices of some commercial publishers.